Let's talk about how to sell this idea of the design sprint.
We talked earlier about how you might talk to your immediate colleagues about it.
Let's talk about how you sort of manage upwards to the executive or
maybe there's some project manager that's over the project.
Six tips.
One, don't make too big a deal about it.
You are going to tell them that hey, this is just a part of making sure we're
going to make some good software that's going to make the company money.
That's what most of these managerial audiences are ultimately going to
care about.
So, don't make too big a deal of hey, we're going to try this new thing and
it's really novel.
They probably won't like that.
They just want you to deliver valuable software.
And kind of apropos of that, how do you create linkages with what matters to them?
So we've learned about design thinking and empathy and
creativity, well apply that to your job of managing upwards.
So, what do they care about?
What are their drivers?
What are the things that are most important to them?
Because what they're telling you probably is hey,
I need this software delivered on time and it shouldn't break and whatever.
But the reality is that's not going to matter that much if the software isn't
relevant to users, they don't want a failure, nobody does.
So it's important to establish linkages with what you're doing to drive
to what's valuable with what they find important.
And they're probably are very closely aligned but you'll need to sort
of figure out how they think about those things and articulate that to them.
Don't overdo it, but just use your new found design thinking skills
when your managing upward, just consider that.
If part of your job here is to get buy-in to observe internal staff or
customers, or you basically have to convince somebody that is a manager or
a gatekeeper to some group of people that you want to observe that you're going to
go out and do that and it's going to be okay.
Make sure you're clear that you're just there to observe.
You're not there to evaluate or say anything or do anything.
That will help initiate that conversation in a way that's
less likely to freak them out.
This is kind of funny, but sometimes it's easier to sell the stuff as lean,
we're going to do something lean so
we don't create waste, rather than, to them, the more nebulous rubric of design.
And that has to do with some of these things we talked about in Course 1 about
the ascent of what's important to companies, innovation.
But the fact that design practices as a widespread thing that manages
understanding, it's still very nascent and
something that's still happening and increasing but
hasn't really gotten to kind of ubiquitous distribution on managers yet.
And don't lead with this,
because you don't, you want this to be a good news story, but there are some pretty
worrying figures about how much software users actually use.
And as I've said, we cite these different studies and they may or
may not apply to your situation, or they may apply to greater or lesser extent.
But the reality is that a lot of software's produced that
users don't like and don't care about.
And probably most people won't find that so shocking.
So, don't be afraid to mention that because we all get fixated on our
immediate deadlines but we all know that we care about our ultimate outcomes.